Useful Eclipse Code Templates

Eclipse's Java editor allows you to define code templates. You can use them to code complete things that you type all the time, such as get logger, logger.debug, etc.

Go to Windows->Preferences->Java->Editor->Templates , and put in the following templates

private static final Log logger =
LogFactory.getLog( ${enclosing_type}.class );

if (logger.isDebugEnabled()) {
logger.debug(${Message}, ${exception});
}

logger.error(${Message}, ${exception});

name:info

logger.info(${Message}, ${exception});

name:warn

logger.warn(${Message}, ${exception});

private static final ${type} ${name} = new ${type} ${cursor};

After you have these templates setup, type the first few characters of the template name and hit ctrl-space, the editor will code complete the template. For example, type getlog, ctrl-space, and enter will declare a logger variable named logge.

By the way, Eclipse has quite a few built-in templates out of the box. I use some of them all the time, such as

'main' - creates a main method
'trycatch' - try catch
'Test' - creates a junit4 test method
'sysout' - System.out.println